


Swear Not By the Moon

by TC (thecollective)



Series: The Nights Between Us [1]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Crane lets his hair down, Curses, F/M, Fuck Or Die, Halloween, Hand Jobs, Haunted House, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rough Sex, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, plot is smut, smut is plot, smut not flowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 05:23:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2569715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecollective/pseuds/TC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ichabod and Abbie investigate a haunted house. Smut ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swear Not By the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own any of the characters from Sleepy Hollow. I make no profit from this (other than your kudos). 
> 
> Was originally written as a Halloween fic, and then, well, I don't know what happened. The title is from Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet" Act 2 Scene 2: "O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable."
> 
> Warnings for a coerced sexual situation brought on by a curse.
> 
> Unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own.

“Crane. Crane. Crane!” Abbie snapped her fingers, hard, to get her partner’s attention. He sat at a table, reading a book. Probably about exorcism. He claimed that the ‘salt and burn’ was an ineffective method. Abbie suspected he would resist any method that Benjamin Franklin had discovered.  ****

“Crane!” She should never have given him her outdated iPod. Ever since he’d discovered Mumford  & Sons, she could hardly find him without "I Gave You All" blasting his eardrums. He said it was delightfully similar to the music they once played in his regiment. In terms of chord progression, of course. She pulled the earbud out of his left ear. “Crane!”

Crane jumped backward, knocking over the glass of water that sat on the table next to him. It seeped into the pages, the ink smearing together, creating illegible tangles of lettering. “Lieutenant!” Crane exclaimed. He slammed the book closed, which resounded with a thud. “I did not expect you so soon,” he said. 

Abbie shrugged. “I finished my paperwork early. Captain said I could go. What are you reading?” 

“No-nothing,” stammered Crane. He pushed the book to the side. “It’s not important.”

Like hell she wasn’t going to look. She grabbed the book, flipped it open, avoiding the wet pages. The writing she didn’t understand, but the pictures? Those, those she understood. “Is this eighteenth century pornography?” she asked slowly.

“No—no,” Ichabod said. “Why would you think that?”

“I know things were different in the eighteenth century, but you _did_ have the Kama Sutra, right?” 

“Of course I’m familiar with that particular work. I’m familiar with all classic literary texts, no matter their country or subject of origin,” Crane protested. The man looked downright uncomfortable, like a teenage boy who was getting the safe sex lecture from his mother.

She decided to relish the moment. “C’mon, Crane, things are different nowadays…it’s okay to look at things like this.” She gestured to the illustrations, which, she had to admit, were actually really well done. Could someone actually bend like that? She cocked her head sideways. Huh. She’d have to remember that move. 

“Lieutenant, I know that society has somewhat become _lax_ in terms of propriety in social settings, but I assure you that this is essential research,” Crane explained. Abbie pretended not to notice the tinge of pink that colored his cheekbones. 

“Of course it is,” she said. His blue eyes were glistening with earnestness and she found herself remembering a day when she had trusted the word of a man whom she knew nothing about. Today was a day when she trusted him with just about everything—even more than she trusted her own sister—and that was the second scariest thing in the world, the first being the imminent apocalypse. 

“Really,” Crane insisted, “I think that this house is cursed.” He gestured to the map that had been hiding underneath the book. 

“What? The old Stevensen place? It’s been abandoned for years,” Abbie said. “Why would it be cursed?”

Crane moved to the other side of the cabin’s living room. He pulled out a collection of newspaper clippings, which were covered in notes and, Abbie noted, were color-coded. She arched one eyebrow as he handed her an article covered in his elegant scrawl, glaring off the page in hot pink ink. 

“Miss Caroline gave me the pen,” he explained. “Before she—you know.”

“Of course,” Abbie said. They didn’t talk about Caroline. Or Mary. Or Katrina. The only name that they mentioned with any frequency was Henry, and that was usually followed by a trip to the bar and six or seven pints, which Ichabod would drink and Abbie would pay for. 

“This house,” Crane continued, “It’s been the site of not one, but _three_ malevolent crimes in the past month. Some of which are too vulgar for me to describe in the presence of a lady.” 

Abbie rolled her eyes. She knew what crimes her partner was referring to, but sometimes she wished he’d be a little less proper in the presence of a “lady.” She wanted to see him let his hair down, so to speak. To loosen up and really embrace the twenty-first century. Maybe she’d get him drunk on margaritas on the next Taco Tuesday at the Mexican restaurant down the street.  “Why do you think it’s cursed then?” she asked. 

“Look here,” he said, gesturing to one article. “This man who assaulted a lady said that he ‘could not control himself.’”

“Sounds like a washed up excuse to me.” 

Crane gave her a stern look. “They each gave the _same_ excuse for their misdeeds,” he said. “They each said that they were unable to control themselves, that if they stopped, they encountered a pain like none other.” 

“Ah, so a curse then. Right.” She looked at her phone. It was still late afternoon; they had a few hours before dark. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s go check it out. I want to leave before some kids decide it’s a good idea to break in there on Halloween.” 

“Why would they commit such a crime on a religious holiday? Should they not be remembering their loved ones that have passed?”

Abbie groaned. Time for another session of 21st Century Culture for the Ignorant Time Traveler. “C’mon,” she said, “I’ll explain on the way.” 

***

The Stevensen house was what Abbie always imagined a haunted house looking like: large, Victorian, and the inside was covered in spiderwebs and dust bunnies. She and Crane had swept the ground floor and found nothing suspicious, just some broken beer bottles and condom wrappers. A teenager hangout, most likely. 

As she climbed the stairs to the second floor, she could feel a pulling sense of dread reaching into her, whispering to her with every step, _turnbackturnbackturnbackturnback._ The more it whispered, the more she forced herself to continue onward, to climb and face whatever hid in the creepy crannies of the old house. Ichabod was right behind her, his breath warming her neck. “Do you feel that, Lieutenant?” he whispered. She shivered, but not from the cold. 

“Yeah,” she said. She kept moving forward. The feeling grew stronger the more she climbed, and when she reached the top of the stairs, she was faced with three doors. All identical. All closed. All ominous. “Which door?” she whispered to Crane. She didn’t know why she whispered, other than it felt wrong to speak louder. 

“Middle,” he whispered back. 

Had his voice always sounded so throaty, so deep and masculine? Or had she just never paid attention? 

She stepped forward to open the door, and the instant her fingers touched the smooth metal of the door handle, she fell forward. She felt trapped, entangled, wrapped up in a spiderweb. A fly waiting for its demise. 

The door opened. Abbie collapsed through it, and the spiderweb wrapped itself tighter around her. Crane stumbled in behind her, and she knew he felt it too. The spiderweb—or whatever it was she was feeling—it curled around her, tracing her flesh, her muscles, her skeleton, reaching inwards and downwards. In and down. In and down. In and down. She sucked in a breath, and the very air inside the house felt alive. It reached in until it found what it was looking for, kindling an attraction she had been denying for months. 

So, this was the curse, then. 

“Lieutenant,” said Crane, and _fuck_ why was his voice even deeper and throatier than before? “I believe I am experiencing the curse.” 

“Yeah. Yeah. I got that. Curse. Yup. The house is cursed.”

“Are you alright, lieutenant?” He reached out, put a hand on her shoulder, and the weight of it had the curse—which lingered in her body, pacing like a caged tiger—curling in the pit of her gut. She wanted to purr, and, _god_ , what was wrong with her. 

“Don’t touch me, Crane,” she barked out. 

Ichabod’s eyes widened as he snatched back his hand. “I apologize,” he said softly. “I did not realize—does physical touch cause you pain?” 

She squeezed her eyes shut. This was not happening. It wasn’t. Nope, not happening unless she looked at him. “No, I’m not in pain,” she said. “Just…the opposite of that, actually.” 

“Oh.” He shifted on one foot. His tall, lean body was hidden underneath that bulky tattered coat. She wanted to rip it off, to throw it out the window and press her fingers to the taut muscles and god, she just needed to feel him. All of him. 

“Crane,” she said. “You should go. I—I’m not myself right now.” She stepped back, putting distance between them. The curse growled, racing through her veins. It felt like she was being sliced and diced from the inside. She stepped closer to Crane and the pain lessened. She reached out, took his hand in hers, and the pain vanished. 

“Lieutenant,” he said, “I think I know what the curse is.”

“Yeah, Crane. I think I know what it’s done to us. Well, me at least.” She looked at him. “Does it…affect you like it does me?” 

“Yes,” he said. “I believe it does.” He looked very apologetic as he said, “Lieutenant, I don’t think the curse will release us until we have satisfied it.” 

Abbie was trying very hard not to pull him to her and entangle her fingers in that luscious hair of his. Luscious? Where had that come from?  “What do you mean by ‘satisfied’?” she said. Her voice was rough, and, yeah, she knew what Ichabod heard in it. Down, girl, she thought to herself. Ichabod is _married._

“I, uh, think we need to, um, achieve a certain level  sexual satisfaction and then the curse will set us free. It is likely that others who experienced this curse did not realize what was happening to them, and that led to the violence when they tried to resist it,” he said. He looked uncomfortable, just as he had earlier when she’d brought up the Kama Sutra, but his thumb gently circled the back of her hand, tracing light circles into her skin. 

“Will it kill us if we don’t ‘satisfy’ it?” she asked. She bit her lip to keep from moaning at the feel of his skin against hers. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “I have never encountered a curse like this before, but if I were to gauge the intensity of the curse by the intensity of the pain we feel, I would say it is quite likely, yes.” He paused then, and Abbie knew she wasn’t going to like whatever he said next.  “I’m very sorry,” he continued, “But I believe that we must, um, well, we must achieve this _together_ , as it were.” He didn’t look her in the eye. “It is apparent that the curse is reliant on physical touch, specifically, physical touch from another person.”

It was too many words. Too many. Ichabod continued babbling about the differences between curses that manifested physically and curses that manifested psychologically and god, she really couldn’t care less. The curse began to growl again, and apparently the hand-holding only worked for so long. This time, she didn't fight the urge to yank off Crane’s coat and toss it in the corner. He’d probably complain about the dust on it later, but she _really_ didn’t care at the moment. She was halfway through unbuttoning his shirt when she remembered Katrina. Crane’s wife. Her hands stilled, and she could hardly keep them from shaking as she resisted the pull of the curse. “Your wife,” she said. “We can’t.”

Ichabod smiled, and yeah, there was sadness in it. “I do not believe we have a choice,” he said, “And I believe she would prefer me alive rather than dead.” 

“Alright,” Abbie said. And that was that. They undressed each other as if possessed, and maybe they were, and maybe Abbie would be lying to herself if she said she hadn’t imagined this scenario before. Of course, she’d always imagined it without the possibility of death at the end. She reached out, splaying one hand across his pale and naked chest. His skin was softer than she’d expected. 

The curse roared in her veins, and suddenly nothing was enough. She pulled him towards her, and they toppled onto the floor, slightly cushioned by their discarded clothes. He ran his hands over her collar bones, and she shivered. He leaned over her, and the long white stretch of his skin seemed to glow in the light of the moon. A full moon, Abbie noted, and maybe she could use that as a reasoning for her being _out of her mind_ not to fight this thing more. “Crane, I—,” she stopped. She didn’t know what to say to him. What could she say? “Sorry this curse has taken away our choice in the matter but really I’ve been wanting to do this for a while?” 

He shushed her, and then their communication was limited to the unuttered sentences they wrote in each other’s skin, the unspoken words that caught in their throats, the unacknowledged feelings that had been creeping up on them, building up like the tide and now crashing over them like waves during a hurricane. What Abbie wanted to touch, she touched, and Ichabod—she couldn’t think of him as Crane, not like this—he finally let his hair down. 

She tangled her hands in his hair, and fuck it was so soft. “Is this alright?” he whispered, just before he sucked her nipple into his mouth. 

“Oh god, yes,” she panted. 

And it was, surprisingly. She knew that it was the curse that pushed him to touch her, to tease her nipples with his soft lips and nimble hands, and yet it was the best she’d felt in a long time. Cursed or not, she was going to enjoy this. Ichabod traced patterns over her skin with his tongue, circling and nipping at her breasts. When the hell had he learned to do that with his mouth? His hands, his freaking elegant hands, ran up and down her sides. If she hadn’t been so distracted by the curse and _not dying_ , she probably would have found it ticklish. 

And then the growling was back, racing through her veins like liquid fire. Searing flashes of pain surged through her, causing her to cry out. Her body twisted, contorted as she cried; Ichabod held her close, trying to soothe her. He was trembling.  With great difficulty, she said, “Crane? I think we need to speed things up. I don’t think foreplay is gonna cut it.”

She could see that he was feeling pain also, and his relief was almost tangible when he nodded. “You deserve better,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “I know. But _please_. I need you to, okay?”

He nodded, his lips in a tight, grim line. She wrapped her arms around his torso, and he placed his head into her neck, breathing deeply. She shivered, and moaned as he placed a finger inside of her, pumping in and out slowly. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he confessed, his breath hot against her neck. 

“You won’t,” she lied. She knew that the curse was going to change everything, but for right now she could pretend that she wasn’t going to shatter a little inside the next time she saw Ichabod with Katrina. 

He added a second finger, crooking it slightly until her breath hitched. “Oh God,” she moaned. “Right _there_.” He inserted a third finger, and she could feel herself clamping down around his hand. Her body was trying to trap him, to keep him there inside of her, and God, wasn’t it ironic? She couldn’t keep him; her mind knew that. 

The growling had been reduced to a dulled roar, and Abbie knew it wasn’t the curse that had her reach down and wrap her hand around his cock. He wasn’t the largest she’d ever been with, but this was _Crane_ , and she felt as nervous as she had her first time. She slowly jacked his cock, smoothing the precum over it, knowing that it would make it easier for what would happen next. Oh god, they were really doing this, weren’t they? 

“Abigail,” he groaned. “ _Abbie_.” 

The soft exhale of her name from his lips made her shudder. The curse poured through her then, and every inch of skin that Crane wasn’t touching burned like nothing Abbie had felt before. She imagined that this was what hellfire burned like, and it _hurt_. It pressed into her, constricting her lungs, causing her heart to stutter. She knew that if she didn’t have Crane then, she’d die. 

“Abbie,” he begged. His eyes were shut tight, his eyebrows pressed together, his forehead shining with sweat. His fingers were still inside of her, and she reached down, took his hand, pulled them out. She placed his cock at her entrance, and wrapped her legs around his waist. The pain was too intense to speak, so she nodded at him, and he pushed inside of her, slowly, but not stopping until he was fully seated. 

She pushed her feet against the small of his back, urging him to move. He pulled back, just enough to push forward again in a shallow thrust. It was too much and not enough, and Abbie was going to kill him if he didn’t move faster. “C’mon, Crane,” she taunted, “Is that the best you can do?”

His blue eyes flashed dark with lust. “Not even close,” he promised, his voice even deeper with desire. He pulled out fully and drove himself back in to prove a point. He did it again and again and again, and all Abbie could do was hold on for the ride. Perhaps it was the curse, perhaps it was just because it was _Ichabod_ , but Abbie felt as if bolts of electricity were coursing through her. She half-expected to see sparks shooting from her fingertips—which were clenching Ichabod’s shoulders tightly enough to bruise the man—and in any other situation, with any other lover, she’d laugh for the ridiculousness. 

Ichabod’s arms were wrapped around her, coccooning her. If this curse was going to kill her, she could think of worse ways to die. They moved together, his thrusts in sync with their breaths, which were quite quick, as if they might not get another chance to fill themselves with oxygen or each other. Ichabod was sweating profusely now, and Abbie leaned up as much as she could to kiss away the beads of perspiration that lined his forehead. He looked at her in surprise but didn’t stop her, and eventually he leaned into her gentle caresses. “Abbie,” he moaned, “Abbie.” His hips echoed his chant, and Abbie tilted her pelvis up just slightly so his thrusts would hit her right _there_. 

“Yes, god, yes, just like that,” she said. “C’mon, Crane, _faster_.” 

Ichabod was a gentleman and did what she asked. His thrusts were so fast now that the floorboards of the dirty cursed house groaned beneath them. It was unsanitary, it was all kinds of wrong, and yet Abbie couldn’t stop herself from moaning, “More, Ichabod. _More._ ”

He reach down between them, finding her clitoris and pressing down on it with his thumb. “Say my name,” he said. 

“Ichabod,” she moaned. “Ichabod.” His attack on her clitoris became relentless, as he feathered his fingers over it in constant quick motions, barely touching her where she needed it most. It pushed her to the precipice, and she cried out for more. His thrusts became more persistent, and he _squeezed_ her clitoris on one particularly deep thrust. 

“Ichabod, god, yes,” she groaned as she came. He slowed his thrusts as she arched into her release. Abbie swore she saw electricity surge out of her then, sparking through the air like lightning bugs. 

She wasn’t sure who started it, but suddenly Ichabod’s lips were on hers, a constant pressure in the midst of a maelstrom of sensation. His kiss brought the lightning back into her body, and yeah, she’d probably regret this later, but right now nothing was more important than soft scrape of his scruff against his skin, the movement of his lips against hers, and the slow rolling of his hips into her body. They kissed until Ichabod reached his peak. “ _Abbie_ ,” he cried out as he came in her. She clung to him as he continued to thrust into her through his release. “Abbie,” he whispered, when their bodies had stilled. He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, and it almost hurt to look him in the eye, to know that this curse had changed everything about them. “Ichabod,” she said, “I—.” She didn’t know how to finish the sentence, and he didn’t ask her to. 

They stayed there, merged, until the hellfire pain ebbed away like a receding tide. They stood and dressed silently, not speaking again until they’d left the Stevensen place and were standing in front of Abbie’s car. “What do we do now?” Abbie asked him. They both knew what she was really asking was, “How is this going to change things?”

“I believe it is customary in modern culture to partake in smoking tobacco after coitus,” Ichabod joked. “I, for one, feel as if we’ve earned it.”

“You got that right,” Abbie muttered. “C’mon. Jenny’s got a pack stashed at my place that she thinks I don’t know about.” She moved to get into the car, but he reached out and stopped her. Even without the curse, his touch still stirred her blood. God, she was so screwed. 

“Lieutenant,” he said, his eyes shining and earnest. “Thank you.”

Abbie shrugged. “It’s what partners do,” she said, “They save each other.” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is very lovingly dedicated to my Cherry Bomb, who always makes sure my fics (and the smut) are physically and medically accurate. Darling, I sincerely hope you're not reading this while you're doing patient rounds! 
> 
> Kudos and comments are love, but as Thumper says in Bambi, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say nothing at all."
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
